The Apparition

An unusual and striking drama but one that fails to realise its full potential.

Vincent Lindon

The
French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli now offers his seventh feature as
director and once again with established collaborators he also provides
the screenplay. But the character of this new work is unexpected coming
as it does from a man who, judging by his previous films shown here
(2006’s Gérard Depardieu vehicle The Singer and his 2015 variation on the Florence Foster Jenkins story, Marguerite), likes to give his audience an entertainment. The Apparition
will surprise too anybody who, being English, treats the title as one
suggesting a ghost story. For us, if not necessarily for the French, The Vision
would have given a clearer indication of what is in store, for what we
have here is a film distinctly serious in tone that is built around the
procedures of the Catholic Church when investigating candidates for
sainthood.

At the centre of The Apparition
is the significant casting in the lead role of that least showy of
leading film stars, Vincent Lindon. Here he plays a former war
reporter, Jacques Mayano, who is not a believer but is called on by the
Vatican to lead an investigation into the question of whether or not a
young novice, Anna (Galatéa Bellugi), who claims to have seen visions
of the Virgin Mary and who is already a venerated figure in France, is
worthy of official recognition as a saint. Jacques and his team have to
enquire not only into the validity of Anna’s claims but into her
history and character, an extensive process that leads them in
surprising directions.

There
is none of the Catholic austerity that we associate with the films of
Robert Bresson, but there is a respect for the subject and for the
procedures that give weight to The Apparition. The whole tone is indicative of something more than a drama designed to please and, in contrast to Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes
(2009) which always somehow suggested a pre-judged opposition to
religion, Giannoli’s film gains from seeming more open-minded: even if
Anna should prove to be a fraud, one such case would not deny the
existence of God and, even if she is the real thing, one can still view
her as somebody whose life has been subsumed by her iconic status.

The
unhurried pace does not lose dramatic force thanks to Lindon’s ability
to play with compelling naturalism while Galatéa Bellugi finds the
right ambiguity to keep us unsure about Anna and her claims. All of
this makes for a good film but one that ultimately ties itself into
rather too many knots. Told in chapters (six as out turns out), The Apparition
takes all of 144 minutes to unfold. However, the weakness lies less in
the length as such but in the elaborate details of the plot which by
the close seem to overwhelm the film. It might function better on a
second viewing, but first time around its undoubted quality seems to
ebb away as we work overtime to put the pieces together. Ultimately,
the plot’s intricacies distract.